Isn't development amazing?

Over the past few months Michelle, Nicole and I have been working very hard to re-watch the over 200 clips we have in our current video library as well as all of the new clips that our families continue to bring to us each month. Why are we watching all of the old clips again you may wonder. Well the new operating system through the Connections Center will soon be operational and it is their goal to have clips for most of the new objectives for parents to watch. This has been a huge undertaking, but it is our hope that it will be very beneficial to all of our families and provide them with the opportunity to watch other families who are working on the same objectives that they are.

Anyway as I have been watching these clips, many of which I had never seen before either I have been spending a lot of time learning the new objective system at least the first few stages. I can't believe all of the amazing things that each of our families do everyday. There have been some really unique and creative things all the way to just everyday activities done in a manageable way for the child. This has been such a great benefit to me and I have found some new ideas to pass along to the families I work with.

Along with getting new ideas it has made me more aware of the developmental milestones that children go through and achieve as they are growing which has caused me to be increasingly more watchful of not only the children at the clinic, but of children in general. I was at my mom's house the other evening swimming and boy do I wish I would have had a video camera. My cousin brought her kids down to swim as well. Her youngest son (3 years old) wanted to help my mom water her flowers. It was the perfect master/apprentice moment which included some nice scaffolding as she helped him to lift the heavy watering can and decide how much water each plant needed. She then took one of the watering cans to a different section to water leaving him with the other can. He went into the water filled the can all the way and then said, "Too heavy" after which he emptied out some of the water to make it light enough for him to carry and proceeded to water more of the plants. Woah development in action!

Children are amazing no matter if the child is neuro-typical going through the stages at the appropriate ages or if the child has an autism spectrum disorder and is going through the stages at a later age as they are working with their parents through RDI. I love to watch this process in action.

Take a moment this week to just stop and watch you might be amazed at what you see!

Talk to you soon,
Erin